table as he gives you the latest news from Rome in a quite' Neapolitan shower of words. Count Dionigi, who lodges below, abominates the baker and his jovial club, and looks indignant if you admire the music. Dionigi, called by the Italians Fosseficato, or the Fossil, lives at Cività Lavinia, the ancient Lanuvium, and has never, during the last fifty years, been known to change one iota-neither growing older nor younger, fatter nor thinner, but remaining ever the same starched little figure, with the same well-regulated grey hair. If all the world were turned into dust, not a grain would rest on his immaculate blue coat-dust and that coat are as antagonistic as the poles. Dionigi has never married. A wife would be de trop to such a male old maid; and as for children-pah! When he comes to see me he makes a riverenza like a dancing-master, rises on his toes, and gracefully advancing, repeats that I am "an angel, a divinity," with a stiff little bow at the close of each well-used phrase. Then down he sits, hat in hand, crossing his tiny knees the funny little manikin! His exits are capital; he rises, bows, and says "he will raise the incomodo" (leva l'incomodo) ; shoulders his stick, which always plays a principal part in his little drama; stands erect; bows; retreats; then bows again, repeating at each move, "I miei rispettiSignora bella, amabile "—spreading his polite blessings

from side to side like a priest at mass. They say Dionigi has something to do with a very romantic story, of which I am anxious to learn the particulars.

Among our characters, Giuseppe della Fante, our maestro di casa, must not be forgotten; he who, according to his own account, is sprung from a decayed Roman family, has once been a soldier, and cannot accommodate himself pleasantly to his altered fortunes. There he stands at the baker's door, cigar in mouth, with his great moustache, military cap, full French trousers, big enough to make an ordinary woman's petticoat, and his spurs-those eternal spurs! Seeing that he never rides more than once a week, and then on the back of a wretched pony, those spurs are a mystery to us. "Ma," as the Italians say, "fanno impressione." Certainly there is some sympathetic affinity between the extinct glories of the Della Fante line and those spurs in Giuseppe's mind. How he chaffs with the pretty maidens skipping in to buy bread! How he gossips with the doctor and the priore! How he patronises the carabinieri, and kicks the dirty urchins who presume to touch those sacred spurs! All this and much more you should see with your own eyes. He is a regular Italian, violent, excitable, impressionable, easily offended, yet so devoted,

generous, and self-forgetting, that one really ends by admiring his very faults. Speak kindly to him, and tears spring up like dewdrops in his sparkling, brigandlooking eyes; ask him to do any wonderful thing-to ride to Rome in an hour, to scale a precipice for the sake of a flower, to hunt the woods for a favourite bird -and he rushes forth with as chivalrous a good-will as the veriest carpet-knight that ever donned a lady's scarf.

The quarrels he gets into, the imaginary battles he fights, the bloody recitals with which he regales the select audience at the baker's-recitals about stilettoes and pistols, encounters with banditti, gaping wounds, threats of vengeance and extermination against his enemies generally-bagatelle ! come vi pare! Then the adventures he has encountered (Heaven only knows whether they be romance or truth)—the grandeur of his appearance on festa days, his tender care of the children, with whom, if they are merry, he romps after the fashion of an old dog lying down to be kicked -his savage ill-humour if his dignity be offended-his bursts of passion-his humble apologies-his alternate smiles and frowns, make up quite an epitome of human life. Poor Giuseppe, genuine child of the South, thou hast the vices and virtues of thy race and of thy clime, but thou hast an honest and a kindly heart!

VIII.

Feast of SS. Peter and Paul-St. Peter's Illuminated-The

Girandola.

HE Feast of SS. Peter and Paul is the birthday of

THE

Rome. Heat and the fear of malaria have by that time driven every foreigner away—which was to me an especial recommendation. So, in the early morning, before the mid-day sun had become dangerously hot, I traversed the parched Campagna, and found myself at the Lateran Gate.

Everything told of heat and a raging Italian sun. People sat pale and exhausted at the shop-doors, armed with paper whisks with which languidly to drive away the flies; little extempore fountains bubbled up on tiny tables spread with delicious pulpy lemons, and acque dolci (sweet drinks) cooled with fresh vine-leaves. Every woman and child we passed, of whatever degree, carried a fan, which she used industriously; the very beggars shook their tin boxes in one hand, and fanned themselves with the other. All labours, trades, and occupations were carried on in the streets, which, never

too wide, were now almost choked up. Shoemakers were making shoes; tailors were sitting cross-legged on tables squeezed up against their house-walls; women were cutting and stitching on low stools, surrounded by their gipsy-eyed progeny; girls were combing each other's hair (often a severe test of friendship in hot weather); and men were walking under the eaves with their hats in their hands, all pale, worn, exhausted. The three-legged tables outside the cafés were crowded with sleepy or sleeping men: the scarcely-awake were indulging in ices or drinks-the sleepers were lying about in the strangest attitudes; for an Italian could sleep, I believe, on one leg, if he tried. It being about noon, the street kitchens were in active operation—fish, flesh, and fowl hissing and broiling over pans of charcoal; and stands of fruit, apricots, figs, and cherries, ripe and ready to drop into one's mouth.

When we reached the English quarter, the Piazza di Spagna, great were the emptiness and the desolation. The windows in the hotels were hermetically sealed, and the doors shut. Piale's library was a wilderness. Not a soul was to be seen. The long flight of the Trinità steps was scorching and vacant. The little fountains at its base bubbled in an utter solitude. No groups of peasants were lounging there en tableaux. The man who does the venerable father with long beard and